Paris, 1798. Hortense de Beauharnais is engrossed in her studies at a boarding school for aristocratic girls, most of whom suffered tragic losses during the tumultuous days of the French Revolution. She loves to play and compose music, read and paint, and daydream about Christophe, her brother's dashing fellow officer. But Hortense is not an ordinary girl. Her beautiful, charming mother Josephine has married Napoleon Bonaparte, soon to become the most powerful man in France, but viewed by Hortense as a coarse, unworthy successor to her elegant father, who was guillotined during the Terror. Where will Hortense's future lie? Inspired by Hortense's real-life autobiography with charming glimpses of teen life long ago, this is the story of a girl chosen by fate to play a role she didn't choose.

I saw a man approaching. Cloaked and hooded, he moved with grace in the flickering candlelight.
My heart soared. Father!
He put out one hand, gloved in white leather. Hope was aglow all around him.
But then—as always—his hood fell back, and there was only a bloody stump where his head should have been. I screamed, gasping for air, my heart pounding.

Mouse and Ém tried to calm me, but I only wept all the harder.What did my father want? Why was he haunting me?
Maîtresse rushed into our room in rumpled nightclothes, a shawl thrown haphazardly over her shoulders. “Such screaming, angel! You’ll terrify the Little Geniuses,” she said, putting down her candle. The shadows made her face look like that of a ghoul.
“I’m sorry,” I sobbed, slipping the miniature enamel portrait of my father from under my pillow. Father: so handsome, so elegant, to have died like that, the crowd cheering as his head fell into a basket of wood shavings.
“It’s that same night-fright she always has,” Mouse told her aunt, her voice tremulous.
“That scary dream of her father,” my cousin Ém said.
I looked into Maîtresse’s eyes. She was mistress of our boarding school, quite strict and demanding, yet we all loved her. “With his—” I winced, making a slashing motion across my neck.
“Come here, my sweets,” Maîtresse said, opening her arms.
Dragging their blankets, Ém and Mouse huddled in close. I could feel Mouse trembling. We called ourselves the Fearsome Threesome, but in the dead of night, Fearful Threesome might have been more apt.
“Repeat after me,” Maîtresse said, pulling the blankets snugly around us. She smelled deliciously of vanilla. “We are safe now.”
“We are safe now,” we whispered in unison.
Safe now, safe now, safe now. But were we? It had been four years since the tyrant Robespierre had been executed, bringing an end to the Terror—but what if it were to happen again? Practically every girl in our school was of the nobility. What was to keep us from being hunted down, having our heads cut off?

SANDRA GULLAND is an American-born Canadian novelist. She is the author of the internationally bestselling trilogy of novels based on the life of Josephine Bonaparte: The Many Lives & Secret Sorrows of Josephine B.; Tales of Passion, Tales of Woe, which was a finalist for the Trillium Award; The Last Great Dance on Earth, as well as two novels set in the court of Louis XIV, the Sun King: The Shadow Queen and Mistress of the Sun. To date, Gulland's novels have been published in nineteen countries and translated into sixteen languages. The Many Lives & Secret Sorrows of Josephine B. was a bestseller in the UK. She divides her time between Ontario and Mexico.

"[G]uaranteed to find fans among bookish youth. . . . The coming-of-age tale that follows — inspired by the historical figure’s autobiography — offers a window into another world." --Toronto Star“[Gulland’s] Pitch perfect balance of lush period details and character-driven narrative shines again in the game of hope.” -- Quill and Quire